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taggartaa on 14 August 2014
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GotBoth said:
Augen said:
Competition is good in the sense that a pure monopoly can lead to business practices that hurt consumers.

If there was no competition we likely would see who ever had the monopoly charging more for systems, controllers, games, online services. While I can agree a market leader is good and parity can be an issue, no competition is definitely bad. All I have to do is view cable companies in the US and how poorly run companies can get away with when there is no pressure on them.

I would point back to PS2 gen, it dominated (pretty much like major cable companies) and we didn' see any of the issues you pointed out.  The other system during 6th gen could serve as the smaller cable companys that can't really compete but are still available (going by your analogy).

The reason the games for the ps2 were so diverse is because of all the competition within the ps2 platform (many developers competing to get the sales). Once you release a console, you can't really increase the price of it, that wouldn't make much sense to the consumer. The ps2 domination gave birth to the ps3 launch, an overpriced, late to market console (in the end the ps3 did fine because of price drops and constant support from Sony first party studios which was all brought on by competative pressure from the 360).

What is causing games to be more stagnant today is not compettition, it's development costs. Consumers demand state of the art visuals, physical effects, and open world scenarios. That is difficult and therefore expensive to make. The more expensive something is to make, the less risk the business is willing to take.